Meat and Animal Identity in Manjula Padmanabhan’s The Island of Lost Girls

Abstract

Meat is concomitant with animals. Modern practices such as factory farming have separated the consumers from knowing about the origin of their source of meat and the conditions of animals in such farms. In Animal Studies, meat is a problematic term as it is always associated with the soulless meat of animals. Animal Rights theorists argue that even humans can be food for other beings but the dominant anthropocentric thinking of our times disallows them to be conceived as ecologically embodied beings. The Island of Lost Girls is a speculative fiction that figures several marine animals that are reduced to meat. The article probes the connection between the category of meat and animal identity, the hyperseparation of animals and humans and the anthropocentric thinking prevalent in the dystopian world of the novels using theories of animal rights activists such as Val Plumwood, Gary L. Francione and David Eaton.